The Science of Yoga

women often thrashed about. In one case, Wise recalled, “it looked like the scanner was going to jump around the room.” As a solution, the scientists devised a head restraint that was bolted onto the machine. It worked. Now the heads of the think-off women held steady even if their bodies became agitated.
    Wise decided to pursue the inquiry as part of her doctoral research. What she and Komisaruk envisioned was documenting the steps by which various neural circuits and networks lit up in orgasm. In essence, they wanted to make a brain-scan movie, hoping it would throw light on fundamental riddles. For instance, the research might help scientists learn how to distinguish the parts of the brain that mediate pain and pleasure. The brain in a state of orgasm, Wise told me, looks much the same as when it experiences pain. “We don’t understand very much about what constitutes the difference.”
    For her dissertation, Wise needed at least a dozen think-off volunteers. But now, with the rise of Neotantra and alternative sexuality, recruitment in the New York City area proved to be easy. Wise knew her way around the sex-and-spirituality crowd and knew the right people to contact for volunteers. “I know somebody who knows somebody,” she mused. “That’s how it works.” One group she drew on was One Taste. Its founder had taken up the methods of More University and set up businesses in San Francisco and lower Manhattan that promoted open sexual relationships as well as orgasmic meditation. Wise’s think-off volunteers ranged from New Agemystics to radical feminists who preached the virtues of learning how to achieve sexual satisfaction without men.
    The more Wise learned, the more she marveled at the diversity of euphoric states. “There are orgasms and there are orgasms,” she said. “For me, thinking off feels like a diffuse orgasm. Now that I’ve been interviewing people who have this capability, some of them have unbelievably intense orgasms. I think some people can cue their nervous system in that direction pretty easily.”
    I asked about length.
    “We’ve seen all sorts of different styles,” she replied. “There seem to be some people who can create an orgasmic state and keep it going. I’ve never timed it. But there are people who can go on and on.”
    While science over the decades has made some progress in illuminating the relationship between sex and yoga, it has cast less light on an esoteric issue that is even more fundamental and important. For ages, the topic was seen as having to do almost exclusively with divine inspiration. Today, it is perceived as the heart of what it meansto be human.

VI
DIVINE SEX
    I n 1970, when I attempted my first Headstand, the topic of sex was typically relegated to the back room. My yoga books and those of my friends made few if any references to sexual aspects of the discipline. The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga never mentioned Tantra, sexual arousal, or finding a willing “female partner,” as Hatha Yoga Pradipika put it so charmingly. My first teacher made some passing remarks about sex. But I could never figure out exactly what he was talking about and left it at that for what turned out to be decades.
    I began this book on the same note. Sex seemed sort of irrelevant. Oh, I figured it was out there somewhere and might produce a good chapter. But for the longest time I had no idea what would materialize and kept getting annoyed every time I dug into the scientific literature.
    The studies were few in number and appeared to be contradictory and downbeat. One said yoga reduced the circulating levels of an important class of sex hormones. Intuitively, that seemed wrong. From personal experience, it seemed obvious that yoga stirred a number of hormones, some most likely sexual in nature.
    But the scientific evidence seemed to point elsewhere. I did the easy thing and put the topic aside.
    What eventually turned me around was the testimony of advanced yogis. I was amazed to find a new generation speaking with great candor about their autoerotic highs and how yoga by nature sought to recast the body for the purpose of sexual pleasure. In interviews, some spoke frankly of their bliss and endeavors to make the rapture permanent. An attractive yogini jokingly called her blinding ecstasies the best sex she never had. Some addressed the issue with what seemed like great reverence, saying yoga could turn the sexual experience into the holiest of